The pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson could be facing a more costly problem than the $3 billion recall of its ASR all-metal artificial hips two years ago.

A replacement product to ASR, the Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip system, has nearly 1,600 lawsuits pending in U.S. courts. It is expected that more than 10 percent of the Pinnacle all-metal hips will have failed in the next two to three years.